Attacks keep GAA chained to the past

The loyalist posters that appeared overnight on lampposts and telegraph poles near the ground were the first signs of trouble. A few hours later a telephone caller to the RUC station in Strabane indicated that a bomb had been left in the grounds of Killyclogher GAA club, just outside Omagh in County Tyrone.

The Killyclogher secretary, Brendan Harkin, and other committee members then endured a nervous five-hour wait as the security forces searched the area. Nothing was found and the incident was declared a hoax.

A few days later it was the turn of club officials in Derry to be concerned when a pipe bomb was found outside the gates of the O'Donovan Rossa pitch in Magherafelt. This time the intent to cause damage and injury was all too clear as the device proved to be activated and ready to explode. It was defused by the British army.

That was followed by the gun attack 10 days ago on young boys standing at the entrance to the St Enda's ground on Belfast's Hightown Road. The rationale employed was that these boys were likely to be Catholics and were therefore targets for the gunmen. The result, of course, was Gavin Brett, a young Protestant man who had been standing with his Catholic friends, was shot dead.

These three incidents occurred over the space of just a few days within the last fortnight and indicate that the GAA and its members are once again being actively and aggressively targeted by loyalist paramilitaries. They can be placed alongside a catalogue of arson attacks on clubhouses, particularly in the north Antrim area, and the picture that emerges is of a concerted and planned campaign of intimidation.

Any connection with the GAA, no matter how slight or peripheral, is regarded as sufficient justification by these terrorists and the significantly heightened atmosphere has eerie echoes of even darker days in the association's recent history.

The decision by Gavin Brett's killers to hone in on the area immediately around the St Enda's club in north Belfast was not an accidental one. Just a short distance up the laneway from where Gavin died, Gerry Devlin, the manager of the St Enda's senior football team, was shot dead by the LVF. That murder rocked the club, coming as it did just a few years after its former chairman, Seβn Fox, was killed by loyalists. Then, as now, mere association with the GAA is placing men and women at risk from the actions of loyalist terrorists.

All the old wounds of Gerry Devlin's death and the campaign of bombings and intimidation that St Enda's had been subjected to throughout the Troubles were re-opened by Gavin Brett's murder. In the years since the ceasefires and the troubled gestation of the peace process that has followed, there was room for the first inklings of cautious optimism.

As the GAA has opened up to the outside world and reaped many of the benefits of increased media attention and coverage, the "bogey man" element that had been attached to the association by some observers had begun to fade into the distance. In the past many of the gun and bomb attacks on GAA people and property were driven by ignorance and the misguided notion that republican politics and the association were irrevocably intertwined.

But as the GAA sucked in the oxygen of publicity, much of the fear factor for those outside it and from different sporting and cultural traditions had dissipated. The GAA had increasingly become part of the mainstream and by and large the rest of the world was happy enough with what it saw.

It was obvious to any who cared to look in any detail that while there was undoubtedly a political dimension to the association's work it was much more to do with cultural ties than close links to any one political party. This was important because it allowed the GAA outlook to become much more relaxed and the tendency to keep one eye fixed firmly over a shoulder became less and less necessary. The GAA and its members were being left in peace.

But on the evidence of these three most recent incidents all of that appears to have been something of a false dawn. Nobody, of course, expected that normality would arrive from nowhere and take root straight away. That would have been fanciful and naive. But nor did anyone believe there would be a swift return to the dark old days of indiscriminate attacks on clubs and members for no other reason than their connection with the GAA.

The persistence of this line of thinking is both worrying and depressing. With violent attacks continuing on a regular basis the nagging concerns about safety linger and there is no possibility of normality. The most insidious thing about the terrorists' campaign is its apparent indiscriminate nature. This breeds fear in everyone and places people on a constant state of alert. It also creates a "them and us" situation and encourages those within the GAA whose natural inclination is to be isolationist and non-inclusive to hold to their particular line.

The depressing thing is that there appears to be little prospect of change in either the near or distant future. The intimidation and the threats may be reduced but if they never disappear completely the GAA will have no opportunity to mature and to develop into a modern, progressive, outward-looking sporting body. Terrorist attacks are the unwelcome ghost at the table and they keep the GAA chained to the past when it should really be looking to embrace the future.

This also has an effect on the association's internal workings because the poisonous atmosphere is grist to the mill of those opposed to change and who wish to block any moves at reform. It should not be forgotten that the momentum for movement on Rules 21, which banned security forces from membership and 42, which relates to the use of grounds for other sports, was driven by the dramatically altered political landscape here. Without developments in relation to policing, security and a host of other issues it would have been impossible for the reformers even to broach the delicate issue of change.

The logic was that if the past is being left behind by the paramilitaries and the politicians, then it is increasingly untenable for bodies like the GAA to cling to the vestiges of that same past. But if a significant number of the rulemakers becomes convinced that the mooted changes in both mood and substance are merely illusory then the incentive to match them and go along with that particular flow disappears.

This is perhaps the most damaging effect of the on-going security operations at grounds and random attacks like that outside St Enda's. The GAA matters to a significant proportion of the population here and there is an eagerness to present a confident and comfortable face to the rest of society. Terrorism makes that all but impossible and forces GAA members to circle the wagons and retreat into the old defensive ways.

The change that has to come if all that is to be left behind is in the attitude and outlook of those who order and carry out these attacks. The fairly unpalatable truth is that this might never happen and fear will never disappear completely from the GAA landscape here. And people still wonder why Northerners take this GAA thing so seriously.